71 dead as terrorists plant bomb on India train track

Track sabotage: rescue workers try to reach passengers inside the train in West Bengal. Maoist posters were found nearby

At least 71 people were killed when Maoist guerillas derailed a passenger train in India by blowing up a section of the track.

Another 200 people were injured when carriages were thrown into the path of a goods train travelling in the opposite direction near the West Bengal town of Sardiha, 90 miles west of Calcutta.

Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos and said it took rescuers more than three hours to arrive.

Nearly 10 hours after the blast, railway police and soldiers were using blowtorches to try to reach a dozen passengers still trapped, said A P Mishra, a local railways manger.

Sher Ali, a 25-year-old Mumbai factory worker, was travelling with his family when they were woken by a loud thud. A moment later, he said, their carriage was thrown from the track.

"My sister-in-law was crushed when the coach overturned. We saw her dying, but we couldn't do anything to help her," said Ali, who had cuts to his head and arms. The rest of the family survived. The passenger train was travelling from Calcutta to the Mumbai suburb of Kurla when 13 cars derailed.

A cargo train then slammed into three of the cars from the other direction, railway minister Mamata Banerjee said. India's Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, had called for a four-day general strike starting today. They have support among the poor in the countryside and have increased their attacks in response to a government drive to flush them out of their jungle bases.

"We have recovered two posters by a local Maoist militia from the site of the accident," said West Bengal director-general of police Bhupinder Singh. "They have claimed responsibility for the incident in the posters."